The proposed research concerns the role of personal similarity in social influence processes. Two facets of social influence are explored: social comparison choice and responses to agreement. The central questions are 1) when, if at all, are dissimilar persons preferred for social comparison, and 2) when is agreement or social support from dissimilar others more influential than agreement from similar others. The research proposes to extend experimental findings of the author derived from attribution theory which suggest dissimilar others can be more influential under limited sets of circumstances. Variables thought to affect both comparison choice and responses to agreement are the judgmental issue, initial judgmental confidence, commitment to the judgment, information about the entities being judged, and the dimension of similarity. Hypotheses will be explored by asking subjects to make judgments about persons or interpersonal situations on the basis of videotapes depicting these persons. After judgments have been made, subjects will either 1) be given another person's evaluation of the same stimulus persons, or 2) be asked to choose another whose evaluation they would prefer to compare with their own. In the first case, the subjects' changes in confidence in their judgments will be measured. In the latter instance, interest will center on the kinds of comparison choices the subjects make.